Thanks for the support coaches. It helps just having somewhere like this to talk about things.

I did hear from the league this morning. They accepted my request for extra practice time considering the situation. Prior to our first game we had 6 1-hour practices, maybe only 5. So we'll have the gym for a full 2 hours on Tuesday's and Friday's for the remainder of December. These girls being so young thou, 9 and 10 years old, we'll probably just keep them for 1.5 hours. 2 hours and we'd finish at 9pm, too late for this age and on a school night. We can't start any earlier as other teams have the gym reserved in those time slots.

I'm just trying to fit everything in that we need to talk about. Between the other two coaches and myself, we've come up with this for our next practice:
Read the numbers like this: Min per Drill/Start Min/End Min
4 0 4 Warmup
2 4 6 Ball Handling/Maravich Drill
5 6 11 Figure 8 w/o Ball
5 11 16 Cone Dribbling
5 16 21 1 on 1 passing
5 21 26 Star Passing
5 26 31 Game of 21
5 31 36 Circle Box Out
5 36 41 Zig Zag: 1v1 Dribble/Defend
10 41 51 Shell Drill
5 51 56 Inbound Play (OFF/DEF)
10 56 66 Motion Offense / Shooting.
20 66 86 Scrimmage

I'm hoping some of those other drills don't take the full 5 minutes so we can spend more time on the Motion Offense Drill.

I'm not so sure about the Figure 8 drill, but the other coach who has done this before wants to try it, so we'll try it. He's coached on select teams before, so I'll take his word for it.

At the 56 minute mark I have up there, the Motion Offense/Shooting section. I'm going to take 5 girls and run the 5v0 Pass and Cut, while the other coaches take the other 5 girls for shooting drills. Then swap them out of course.

So I assume you have someone dribbling in front of them with this drill? We have done that a few times, not with the cones thou.

We'll try. Even this might be too complex for them, but we'll see.

I'm a new coach too but in a very similar situation: limited practice time and severe talent deficit, as well as a very timid group of third grade girls. It seemed like we barely had the ball the first few games because the other teams just kept taking it away from us. We are still struggling but have made vast improvements in the last few weeks. Here are a few things we've focused on in practice that I believe have helped:
- Full-court "no-dribble" scrimmaging. Our girls had no idea how to get open, pass and receive passes. No-dribble scrimmaging, with semi-frequent coach interruptions to explain how to cut, pass, hold off defenders when receiving a pass, box out, etc., has helped. We also have explained that all that our partner passing drill practice (chest passes, bounce passes and overhead passes) did not include any "lob the ball up and hope for the best" passes for a reason. We've also spent time working on fake passes and pivoting/ripping the ball through to avoid having the ball stolen by the on-ball defender.
- Ball-handling drills: We do dribble relays every practice, and this is another favorite: I bought soccer cones and put an odd number of them (11, 13, 15) at half court, split the girls into two even teams at each baseline, everyone has a ball. I blow the whistle and they dribble to half court, pick up a cone and bring it back to the baseline and stack them up, everyone keeping their dribble non-stop. Team w/ most cones stacked at the end wins. We'll do this 2 or 3 times, switching between dribbling w/ left or right hand.
- Similar drill with the cones except full-court or half-court layups. The girls will keep track of who wins more of these cone drills during practice and the losers have to sing Happy Birthday to the winners at the end of practice.

I agree with previous comment about choosing a couple key areas for improvement and focusing on those.

Above all, stay patient and positive! Goal No. 1 is for the kids to have fun, No. 2 is improvement. If they love playing they will keep playing and improve. Nothing matters more.

soren024,

Thanks for the comments.

I do have the no-dribble scrimmage on my list. Jeff's blog talks about those a lot. I think we'll do that for our next practice during scrimmage.

So can they dribble it up over half court, but once over half court, you have to pass. Or do you not even allow a dribble at all?

We do no dribble the whole way. Our league only allows man-to-man 1/2 court defense, which I think is great, and it never occurred to me to allow them to dribble at all when we do no-dribble scrimmage. I would recommend doing all or none as it could get confusing otherwise.

Note: when you first start, you might need to let them make some mistakes and get away with it. After doing no-driblbe scrimmage in a few practices, now we blow the whistle and change possession if they dribble.

I did wonder if this would negatively impact their ballhandling, but it's made them much more willing and able passers / pass catchers.

One other tip: I like to transition out of this and end practice w/ something a bit more light and fun as this can get a bit competitive. :)

Coach: Let me end this contribution with a last comment, explain to your kids, why you are doing a certain drill. Many new young coaches drill for the sake of drilling without explaining WHY. As Jeff suggested with the 1 on 1 defensive drills, why are we doing it? to keep our man from dribbling by us and getting an easy lay up. When I say break the game into individual parts and drill those parts again, with defense we take the whole of 5 on 5 break it down into individual drills of 1 on1 progressing to 2 on 2 but again explaining why we are doing this. Passing" balance, two hands on the ball, follow through in other words extend your arms on the pass pop your elbows, hands end up back to back after you release the ball, thumbs point to the floor and fingers point to your target. yes, sounds long involved but trust me necessary Jeff, Joe and Coach Rob, have been coaching kids for years, I got most of my info from them them used my past experience as a coach to develop the players Good Luck Coach Mac...p.s. here a lot of demonstrations with the kids, they speak Chinese, I speak very little, I really use my old posy board.

That's a good point coachmac.

The telling them why they are doing something. I actually do that with about half the drills we do. I think on some things I might even need to reinforce it with asking them "does anyone still not understand".

And the passing tip. Yep, did that as well. Exactly as you explained it because that's how I was taught almost 40 years ago now. But I still have those girls that refuse to do it. And I know it's not because they don't understand. It's not one of my 4' tall 50 pound girls. It's a couple of the 5th graders. One has played before, the other hasn't but does have athletic ability. She does some kind of martial arts thing. Those two I think just don't care enough. They make sloppy lazy passes when they are just doing the 1-on-1 passing.

I may come back to you on this one: "with defense we take the whole of 5 on 5 break it down into individual drills of 1 on1 progressing to 2 on 2". We've doing the zig zag drill. Both alone and with a partner dribbling. I haven't looked into anything past that yet as most of them have trouble on both sides when we add the dribbler.

A big problem, is the NBA, most of the advertisements here, are with Hardin, and Clay Thompson...they rarely speak about the fundamentals, they talk about being creative, putting on a show breaking ankles and postering someone, the kids see these ads and try to emulate those moves all that before they have actually learned the game. The other day, my big kid was out on the perimeter practicing his three point shot, but he has to dip his shoulder, and take his square up away from the basket because he is simply not strong enough to shoot from that distance.I told him to get inside, work on technique, rim flips,touch your elbow to your knee before to make sure your elbow is on the target..ok coach let me know how things work out for you Coach Mac

soren024,

No dribble. I believe I read that in one of Jeff's posts. Start with the no dribble at all, then eventually you can allow two dribbles only to get a better passing lane.

I'm just afraid if I tell them no dribble at all, that when they get into the game, they will think they can't dribble it up to half court.

I forgot this Coach, something I learned from Bob Knight many years ago, IF YOU CANT PASS, AND YOU CANT CATCH, YOU CANT PLAY THIS GAME MORE MISTAKES ARE MADE CATCHING AND PASSING THE BASKETBALL THAN ANY OTHER FUNDAMENTAL IN THE GAME. drill that fact Coach Mac